10 Tips for Managing Your Schedule like a Pro-Entrepreneur

Time management is life management. We all have one question in mind while reading the biographies or autobiographies of some of the top entrepreneurs of the world, “How do they manage to do so much in such little time?”. Managing a schedule with so many things to do, like managing your brand, spending time with family, making time for self-growth, and managing studies is an art that can only be learned through consistent practice. Do you think an entrepreneur is born with the skill of managing such a hectic schedule? The answer is NO! They grow, learn, and evolve through the process to manage their schedule and make time for everything. Just think of an escape room breakout and how you have to strategize and prioritize all the tasks to complete your mission in an hour.
Navigating through the limited 24 hours every day to make the most out of it in a healthy manner is a similar feat that requires a lot of organisation, not only on-page but also deep inside your mind.
Why is it Important to Manage Your Schedule?
The world is fast today, and our needs are endless. Poor time management in such an environment gets us into a limbo of unproductive and overwhelmed minds. If you don’t manage your schedule properly, things will pile up and snowball beyond your control very quickly.
A proper work schedule helps you in organising all your life events in a healthy format and reduces the chances of having an early burnout. It also helps in distilling out stress from your life. Once you start managing your time, you can see a difference right away.
Top 10 Tips for Managing Your Schedule
Let’s a look at some practical and useful tips that can help you ace the time-management game:
1. Stick to a Routine
The first step to start your time scheduling journey is to plan out a routine. A routine is essentially a series of actions you follow every day. Setting up a fixed routine helps you know what needs to be done when. To make a functional routine, your goal should be to organise tasks in a way that doesn’t overwhelm you. Make a list of everyday tasks that you go through without exception and space them out according to time and priority. But make sure to leave enough intervals in between to allow for rest and to accommodate sudden plan changes.
2. Block Time
Time blocking is a method of blocking a fixed duration of time in your schedule for a particular task. For example, if you plan on working on an assignment on Friday, you will have to block your time for an hour or so in advance to avoid any delays. This method is helpful as it gives you an idea of what needs to be done when and the whole time wasted on procrastination is saved. You can also block time for your official calls, group meetings, projects, assignments, etc. Thus, you handle everything without losing sight of your goals or things that need to be done urgently.
3. Spend Time on Meetings Wisely
The most important thing for a pro-entrepreneur is to manage time for team meetings as the team constitutes the most important part of work. Instead of spending the whole evening on coffee or dinner with clients, try to squeeze in 10- or 15-minutes meetings. This way, you will be able to manage time in a much more efficient way without losing so much. Once you know what points need to be discussed in a meeting, you will be able to get to the main points and avoid any undue discussions.
4. Stay Aware About Your Deadlines
As an entrepreneur, when you have so many tasks on your plate, you tend to lose track of the deadlines. Planning your schedule in a way that includes the deadlines is very important. To get more productive, you can start by assigning time blocks for tasks that need to be done on an urgent basis. Once these tasks are over, you can follow the same approach for other tasks as well. Remind yourself regularly about the tasks that need to be done immediately and alert yourself about the deadlines in your routine. These deadlines are not to make you overwhelmed, but to make sure that you make time for everything.
5. Track Your Time
If you are failing to understand where all your time is evaporating, it is time for you to start keeping track of it. You can use time tracking apps or the old school scheduling by pen and paper to track how much time is being utilised on which chore. This helps you in finding out where you are spending most of your time and then helps you in reducing this wastage of your time.
6. Use Calendars and Journals
Almost any entrepreneur you follow will emphasize the use of calendars and journals. Updating and staying on top of your calendar is a major task that all entrepreneurs do. This helps you in categorising and dividing time efficiently for every chore. The use of journals can be done for gratitude, scribbling, conscious writing, and more. The journal ensures that you don’t get too worked out that you start feeling like nothing is falling in place.
7. Prioritisation
With around fifty tasks on your schedule, you must prioritise those tasks according to what needs to be done when. As an entrepreneur, you get invited to too many functions, and it is not always easy to say no to those, but at that time, the importance of prioritising comes in handy. Be honest with your priorities and learn to say NO for your good.
8. Try and Stay Away from Distractions
Distractions, especially social media, can end up consuming most of your time. Any form of distraction can easily ruin your day’s productivity. And hence the best way to stay away from them is by eliminating them from your life. You can also try and allocate time schedules for those distractions so that your work does not suffer.
9. Make Time for Yourself
With my biasedness, this is the most important tip if you are a budding entrepreneur. We all get so busy with what we are doing that we forget to make time for ourselves. Unless your body and mind are not uniting, all the work you do and the money you make is a waste. Make it a point to inculcate personal care days for yourself and never compensate for them.
10. Make Time For your Family
As an entrepreneur, we fail at making time for our family and friends. The workload should not make your family time suffer; the appreciation and the amount of distress you get by spending time with your family cannot be matched by anything. Whether it be morning, evening, or night make it on your schedule to spend quality time with those who truly care about you.
Conclusion
Productivity is a result of persistence, planning, and focus. These were some of the tips which are important while you are trying to manage your time like a pro-entrepreneur. A balance of rigid discipline and flexibility is the key to making sure your daily tasks are done without putting much pressure on you. And remember, proper resting is also an essential part of a productive routine.